Making Diet Changes While Living With Metastatic Breast Cancer

I’ve been asked many times over the past nearly ten years about what I eat now that I have metastatic breast cancer. It’s a difficult question for me because I grew up in a family that had issues with food, at least from my perspective. I remember being encouraged to eat raw egg yolks because they would provide more protein for my competitive swimming, eating only prunes and, I think, pineapple when my mom and one sister and I started the Beverly Hills diet and cartons of something like SlimFast. The focus on food as both punishment and reward, with weight the ultimate judge, colored my eating behavior until I was very much an adult.

It took me a long time just to learn that I could eat what I wanted to eat, and even longer to be able to eat what I wanted in front of people I love.

So it’s understandable that I bristle when asked about my diet and cancer. The question implies that food is the solution; that I can control the uncontrollable simply by eating or not eating something.

It’s a harmful way of thinking.

Still, it’s no secret that eating less processed food does serve everyone well, including many people living with cancer. There is legitimate research happening now to try to better understand how certain diets, whether Mediterranean, low-carb or ketogenic, might be especially supportive for some types of cancer.

But for me, any changes to my diet are less about losing weight and not at all about reducing cancer risk. What I want is to be able to maintain my ability to move and do things for as long as possible. I am open to the idea that diet can help with that. So, this past spring, I participated in a program offered by Living Beyond Breast Cancer with dietician Rachel Beller. The program centered on eating more fiber (which can be unacceptable with some breast cancer treatments, but not with mine) through seeded breads and grains, vegetables, fruits and beans, as well as other ingredients.

I almost didn’t sign up for the program because I knew that it could cause trouble given my diet history, where an all-or-nothing attitude meant that I might be “good” for a bit but that would be followed by excessive “bad” eating. Unhealthy and unacceptable for me physically but also emotionally.

I did sign up, though, and I’m glad I did because it brought home to me that the large steps about healthier eating behaviors I took before getting diagnosed with cancer needed a little updating. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded that just because you have stage 4 cancer, you can and need to take care of yourself outside of cancer too. I think I look better with these small changes and I know I feel better but even with that reinforcement, it is hard to turn a “change” into permanence. I’m very much only in the first part of this process.

This summer, when I was asked a few times about my revised eating habits and if it was because of cancer, I started to take a breath and answer as honestly as possible. The fact is that everything in my life is impacted by cancer but the choices and changes I make are less driven by cancer these days than by the simple desire to feel good in my body. Sometimes cancer is just sitting in the backseat, along for the ride.

For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.